Page 13 - Yachter Spring 2023

RETURN TO IRELAND – SPRING 2022
Due to my brother Nigel’s commitments as Commodore at the Axe Yacht Club, we had to embark on an early season cruise in Spring 2022.We left Gins on the 9th May with some sort of plan by way of a change. In the mid-eighties we had sailed Nigel’s quarter tonner in the Yachting Monthly Triangle Race.
Back then the course was Torquay to Treguier, then to Cork and finally back to Torquay.As the smallest boat we had been made most welcome at the Royal Cork Yacht Club and we had always wanted
to visit again, so almost forty years later
we were heading west.The south easterly wind lasted all the way to Durleston Head before it veered south west, what else
would you expect? We reached Salcombe
in daylight ready for a meal onboard and some well-earned sleep.The next day we
set off again early in a south westerly breeze which conveniently backed during the day, so we just (fifty metres on some occasions) cleared a succession of headlands, including Rame and Gribben, finally fetching up just north of Mevagissey, then after a couple
of tacks and another close scrape with the headlands of Dodman and St Anthony, we arrived into Falmouth.We had had some issues with rapidly wearing alternator belts on the engine and a lot of screeching going into harbours. Despite holding a number of spares we were not able to properly identify the true cause, so we thought it prudent to obtain more spares which involved motoring
up to Penryn and borrowing a convenient berth near theVolvo dealer.While I rushed off, Nigel chatted to a local boat owner who advised that “even if we did have only 1.1 metre draft with the keel up, there was still only twenty minutes of tide left to keep us afloat”. Suffice to say we were quickly on our way with new belts stowed and
had a leisurely sail to Helford, fuelling and watering on the way at Falmouth.
Looking at the weather forecasts, we decided that The Isles of Scilly would be a good stop-over for a couple of days, while the forecast north westerly winds
Wolf Rock Light House
blew through.The following morning it
was down through the passage inside of
the Manacles Rocks, close into the Lizard past the Wolf Rock Lighthouse where
the significant swell was apparent.What a lonely bleak existence that must have been before helicopters and automatic lights
(who remembers Blue Peter’s John Noakes dunked in a breeches buoy on his visit there?). Having crossed the Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) at our interpretation of ninety degrees, we went to the north of
the islands and found a mooring in New Grimsby Sound which just gave shelter from
CRUISING REPORTS 13